This specification relates to collecting and compiling information regarding search operations.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources such as image files, audio files, video files, and web pages. A search system can identify resources in response to a text query that includes one or more search terms or phrases. The search system ranks the resources based on their relevance to the query and on measures of quality of the resources and provides search results that link to the identified resources. The search results are typically ordered for viewing according to the rank.
The search system may also rank resources based on the performance of the resource with respect to the particular query. For example, some conventional search systems rank resources having a high click-through rate for the particular query higher than resources having a lower click-through rate for the particular query. The general assumption under such an approach is that queries are often an incomplete expression of the information needed, and the user's action of selecting a particular resource is a signal that the resource is at least as responsive to, or more responsive to, the user's informational need that the other identified resources.
To determine the performance of a resource with respect to particular queries, information regarding the particular query, the resources, and user actions is collected. However, some search results facilitate other user interactions in addition to the selection of an identified resource. Given the vast amount of user interaction data that can be collected, and the noise that is inherent in the data, it is difficult to collect this information in a meaningful form for processing.